hi delia *smile*

well i think my answer on another post may have kicked things off so here's what i said before in case anyone mised it *smile*:

"a slave is someone who is owned. and that's pretty black and white, either you belong to yourself or you belong to someone else.

a submissive is someone who belongs to themselves but submits themselves to someOne else's descisions at given times, and given areas of their life. sometimes almost all the time, but ultimately they are their own responsibility to some degree. there are all sorts of shades of grey when it comes to submissives and how far it goes with their Dom/me/Top/Master/Mistress/etc and how they choose to exspress their submission but the key difference is that they still have an underlying ownership of themselves. they may commit to someOne to whatever depth, whatever form of exspression, but at the end of the day they are their own person and ...they need to watch out for themselves and their own interests to whatever degree."

so i think we're almost on the same wave length *smile*. i do have to disagree with the part that becoming a slave is a long drawn out process, though. i think the process is long in deciding to become one (sometimes) and it is certainly a long haul towards becoming/being made a good one. but actually becoming a slave can be accomplished in an instant by simply making the commitment to be wholey Owned by another. before the full commitment is made they arent a slave because they retain their rights and Ownership of themselves. sign on the dotted line and those rights and Ownership are gone.

i think what makes it seem otherwise is a basic confusion in language. the concept of slavery has been around for centuries and until recently the meaning stayed pretty clear.. though maybe with some different customs etc for different cultures. but the word itself has now been hijacked into something thats all muddled up with role play (no offense to role play, it's fine, its just not the same thing. an apple is not an orange even if theyre both tasty) of varying degrees.

unfortunately there are so many associations with the actual word that it's very hard to get to the facts. on one hand it's not the role play fantasy stuff that the word brings up in BDSM minds. and on the other hand it's not the torture and abuse that inevitably comes to mind when historical slavery comes up.

if one can overlook the cultural associations then the regular dictionary sorts the problem just fine. a slave is "One bound in servitude as the property of a person or household. " (*wishing i could find a better version of that today- ive seen better just cant find it now*) . the slave is a slave the moment the Owner takes possesion of her/him. the fact that no money changes hands these days (usually) can murk things up a bit but property is property